In Baseball, the Times Are Changing

TRENTON — On the first day that minor league baseball’s new rules to speed up the game went into full effect this season, a home-plate umpire ejected the manager of the Class AA Trenton Thunder for arguing.

And what was he arguing about? The new rules, of course, and more specifically, the one that requires the leadoff batter in each half of an inning to be in the batter’s box with at least five seconds remaining in the time allotted for the break. The umpire, Eric Gillam, ruled that a Trenton batter, Mason Williams, had not abided by the five-second rule and called a strike. The Trenton manager, Al Pedrique, thought that Gillam should have warned Williams before putting him in an 0-1 hole. Gillam did not want to hear his complaints. Pedrique got tossed.

So did the push by baseball to speed up its game begin — with at least one ejection. But that was back in May, when new pace-of-game measures were being put into effect in both the major and minor leagues, and bumps in the road were inevitable.

Now, more than three months later, the measures have become the norm and are having at least a modest impact. In the major leagues, the effort focuses on a between-innings clock similar to the one being used in the minors and a mandate that hitters keep one foot in the batter’s box, except under certain circumstances, such as a wild pitch, a play on the bases, even a swing.

But at the two highest levels of the minors, Class AA and AAA, the effort has gone further, most notably with the introduction of a 20-second pitch clock designed to curtail the familiar dawdling that goes on in any given at-bat.

Both measures are shaving time off games. Not much — not enough to turn baseball into a 1-hour-50-minute soccer game — but still enough to make a dent in a sport that can seem slow by today’s standards.

Chris Marinak, Major League Baseball’s senior vice president for league economics and strategy, said the average length of a nine-inning game had declined from 3 hours 2 minutes in 2014 (the first time it had been over 3 hours) to 2:54. Marinak said the eight-minute drop was the biggest decline in game time since 1963.

In the minors, where the pitch clock is also helping to move things along, the reduction has generally been even larger. Through games on Aug. 17, the average length of a nine-inning game in the Class AAA International League had fallen to 2:41, from 2:56 in 2014, a 15-minute decline that was the biggest among the minor leagues.

Right behind was the Class AAA Pacific Coast League, with a drop to 2:45 from 2:58. In Class AA, the Eastern League shaved off 12 minutes (2:38 from 2:50) and the Southern League, 11 minutes (2:41 from 2:52).

Only the Class AA Texas League stood apart: The average length of its games fell just five minutes from 2:51 in 2014. In any case, a change seemed to be occurring everywhere clocks were being used. And it is a necessary change, said Pat O’Conner, the chief executive for the minor leagues, more formally known as the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues.

“Pace is important,” O’Conner said. “We’re dealing with a clientele now that their whole life is about pace.”

As Rob Manfred, the new commissioner of Major League Baseball, prophetically told reporters during spring training: “I’m really intent on the idea that we’re going to have an average game time that’s going to start with a ‘two’ next year as opposed to a ‘three.’ ”

During the winter meetings after the 2014 season, M.L.B. officials approached O’Conner and asked him if he would let the minor leagues be a guinea pig and institute the most challenging of the new rules: the one intended to limit the time between pitches to 20 seconds.

It is a rule that confronts all the familiar, and sometimes maddening, baseball mannerisms: the batters who continually take time to adjust their batting gloves, the pitchers who rub up the ball, and then rub it up some more, and then do a little groundskeeping on the mound before finally — finally! — throwing the next pitch.

Major League Baseball paid to install the clocks in all Class AA and AAA ballparks for this season. O’Conner said there were no clocks in Class A because, among other things, those teams might have problems finding people to operate them.

“As we’ve done throughout our history, we’ve agreed to be the laboratory,” O’Conner said in reference to the pitch clocks. “We take a great deal of pride in the fact that we’re research and development for Major League Baseball on players, on umpires, executives, fans and so on.”

In both the major and minor leagues, April was used as a trial period for the new rules. But as May began, major leaguers who did not comply with the new rules could be fined or issued warning letters, and umpires could penalize minor leaguers with balls and strikes if they did not abide by the pitch clock, the between-innings clock and a third timer that regulates time for pitching changes (which is being used in the major leagues, too).

In the minor leagues, where there is no players union that provides a buffer against punitive measures, 219 extra balls and strikes were called between May 1 and July 31 on Class AAA pitchers and batters who were not ready in time. That is 0.17 of a violation per game, with most infractions committed by pitchers (83 balls) and batters (45 strikes) who violated the 20-second pitch clock.

In Class AA, there were 177 violations, or 0.14 per game. Similarly, the pitch clock accounted for more than half of the violations, and the pitchers were also punished twice as often as batters.

In the major leagues, it was not as clear how much discipline had been doled out. Michael Teevan, a vice president for communications for Major League Baseball, declined recently to release figures on fines or warning letters. The players’ union, meanwhile, shed some light on the matter.

“During a typical week, warning letters are issued to a few players on each team, and a very small percentage of those lead to fines,” said Greg Bouris, the chief spokesman for the union. “When one takes into consideration the total number of at-bats, inning breaks and pitching changes across the league each week, the frequency of infractions has been quite small. This is a work in progress and something we monitor on a daily basis, but over all, we’re pleased with the adjustments players have made to help improve the pace of play.”

No Fines Yet for Mets

A survey two weekends ago of the Mets’ locker room did not turn up any players who knew of someone who had been fined. But warnings were a different matter.

“I know of some guys that have gotten letters,” said Kelly Johnson, the team’s jack-of-all-trades infielder and outfielder. “Not me.”

Another Met, Daniel Murphy, said: “I got two the other day. I had them waiting for me when we got home.”

As to what major league players thought of the new measures — the clock restricting time for pitching changes and between half-innings, and the mandate that batters keep a foot in the batter’s box — most seemed supportive enough.

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A countdown clock at Citi Field. Unlike the minor leagues, the majors do not have a pitch clock.CreditRichard Perry/The New York Times

“I’m not a guy that stepped out of the box anyway,” Mets outfielder Michael Cuddyer said. “I like getting in and getting it going and moving.

“I do think there’s a lot of times when guys take forever to get in the box, and you’re like, Let’s go, come on now. I think you’ve seen a lot less of that because of what’s been implemented.”

A more nuanced view came from Mets Manager Terry Collins. “It’s pretty funny,” he said. “In the spring, one of the things we had written down was that we were going to talk to our players about trying to slow the game down. Take an extra five or 10 seconds to analyze the situation, analyze what’s called for.

“Then, all of a sudden, here comes M.L.B. — ‘Hey, we got to speed the game up,’ ” Collins added. Still, he said, the Mets were getting reports several times a month from Major League Baseball on where the team stood in pace-of-game improvements, and he said the club was doing fine.

Indeed, in a game between the Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates on Aug. 15 at Citi Field, it was the Mets who seemed to do a bit better at abiding by the 2:25 limit between half-innings (it jumps to 2:45 for nationally televised games).

Over the first five innings of the Aug. 15 game, Mets starter Jon Niese threw his first pitch anywhere from two to 13 seconds before the innings clock expired. In contrast, Pittsburgh starter Charlie Morton was anywhere from two to 19 seconds late.

Asked later if he had been receiving any warnings from umpires to speed things up, Morton said no. And while he said he was glad to see the games going faster, he offered a cautionary note, too, stating that major leaguers “are professionals, and they need the time that they need, and I don’t begrudge anybody for taking a little extra time.”

Perhaps the umpires do not, either. Morton was not admonished on Aug. 15, and the next day, the Mets’ starter, Matt Harvey, was given some leeway as well. Although he beat the clock in a majority of the innings he pitched, he was late twice — each time after making the last out at the plate in the previous half-inning.

In the second instance, in the top of the fifth, the game’s home-plate umpire, David Rackley, even told Pedro Florimon, the Pittsburgh batter, to let Harvey finish his warm-up pitches before getting into the batter’s box.

That sort of discretion has probably made the pace-of-game measures relatively easy to absorb in the major leagues. More of an issue, perhaps, could be a pitch clock in the majors.

Anthony Recker, a backup catcher for the Mets who has also played in 27 games at Class AAA Las Vegas this season, called the minor league pitch clock “ridiculous.”

He said: “You get a hitter, swings at a pitch and then steps out of the box — as soon as they swing and you throw the ball back, once the pitcher’s on the dirt, clock starts. Well, the hitter typically — because I’ll get the ball and I’ll throw it back right away — will, like, step out, especially if they swing and miss or something, they’ll step out and kind of take their time.

“They’re not really supposed to step out of the box, but you know, they step out, gather themselves. By the time they get back in, there’s usually 10 or less seconds on the clock. Let’s say I have a runner on second. I’m going through multiple signs and he shakes once. Now, all of a sudden, it’s three seconds.”

At that point, Recker said, he is still urgently flashing signs, and the clock is expiring. “It’s stupid,” he said.

Consensus Unclear

Whether Recker’s opinion represented a consensus among players was uncertain, and several Trenton players, including Aaron Judge, the highly regarded Yankees outfield prospect who has been promoted to Class AAA, said earlier this season that the pitching clock did not bother them.

A similarly adamant opinion was expressed Friday by Tim Brunswick, the minor leagues’ vice president for baseball and business operations, who has also seen the 20-second pitch clock up close this season. “It is a long time,” he said of the 20 seconds. “In that situation on a baseball field, 20 seconds is a very long time. It just is.”

The pitch clock has already created a difference of opinion between Manfred and Tony Clark, the head of the players’ union. At separate question-and-answer sessions before this year’s All-Star Game, Manfred said he thought pitch clocks could be “useful” in the majors, while Clark countered that it could be “dangerous” to introduce such a significant change to the way the game is played at the highest level.

Baseball in the major leagues, he said, is “fundamentally different” from the way it is played in the minors, with bigger stadiums, more fans, faster players and more “moving pieces” in general. A pitch clock, he strongly implied, might not fit.

But for now, it does in Trenton and other minor league outposts. For Pedrique, the Trenton manager, the whole season has been an adventure of sorts, with clocks ticking here and there in stadiums, young players needing to adjust, and umpires figuring it all out, too.

“It’s going O.K.,” he said in May, putting aside the fact he had already been thrown out of a game because of an argument related to the clocks. “At this level, we still develop them and help these guys learn how to play the game. Now we’ve got to worry about the clock.”

Asked again in midseason how he and his players were coping with the new rules, he said: “It’s routine now. They understand it’s part of the game.”

Asked for another assessment recently, as Trenton’s season moved into its final leg, Pedrique was more nuanced. “It’s been inconsistent,” he said, citing instances in which the pitch clock did not start immediately after the pitcher received the ball “and then the umpire keeps signaling up there to start the clock.”

“That kind of stuff,” he said.

“But I think over all, it’s been going well,” he added of all the new rules, pitch clock included. “Personally, I like it. There’s nothing worse than playing a long, slow game.”

But as Pedrique can attest, the new rules, whether you like them or not, have not altered the fundamental rule of baseball: that it is the number of outs recorded, and not a clock, that determines when the game is over.

So it was that after Pedrique’s ejection on May 1, he waited for the game to end. And waited. And waited.

Finally, the Thunder scored twice in the bottom of the 18th inning to record a 5-4 victory over the Akron RubberDucks. The game lasted 5:35, the longest in the history of Arm & Hammer Park.